Briquette Project 2016

Green Briquette Project 2016

“Waste is wealth!”

To promote sustainable development and environmental conservation, and to achieve sustainability of our organisation, in March 2016 we launched our Green Briquette Project. This is a co-operative run by an intergenerational team of six women members of We are Walukuba. Our project aims to produce an alternative fuel to reduce local dependency on charcoal and encourage recycling of waste in our communities. The co-operative collect organic waste from households and small commercial enterprises in Walukuba and transform this into bio-char for use in producing an alternative fuel source – briquettes.

Briquettes provide a more environmentally sustainable source of fuel to charcoal. In Walukuba many households cannot afford, or have no access to, electricity, so rely on charcoal for cooking and heating water. This is a major expenditure and has a severe impact on the environment, fuelling rampant levels of deforestation. Tests have proven briquettes can be more efficient than charcoal with a longer burn-time, reaching higher temperatures faster, and producing less smoke.

The co-operative work fulltime in producing briquettes using a manual briquette machine and a bio-char kiln fabricated from recycled oil drums. The briquettes produced are sold to generate income to facilitate our community intervention activities. During our Waste Action Intervention events briquettes are distributed to the audience as part of a demonstration of how waste can be wealth! We will be training all our of members in briquette-making, as well as offering skills workshops for our wider community later in 2016.